The Darkness Claims
by A Dirty Little Secret
Summary: Sitting at the dining room table with her chin in her hand, Violet laments everything her mother has become. She contemplates briefly the idea of being alone once again, and the summons slips from her lips before she has a chance to reconsider.


x

x

the darkness claims

x

x

The House seems to have been impossibly constructed to let in obscene amounts of light while simultaneously casting massive shadows everywhere, and sometimes Violet makes it into a game. She pretends the sunlight burns her skin and she tests how many rooms she can walk through without leaving the darkness.

Typically, she makes it through the entire first floor before she ends up in the hallway with the choice of continuing the game down into the basement or stepping onto the sun-coated staircase. No matter how many times she tries, even when she plays at different times of day, she always ends on the same choice.

She retreats to the bedroom that was once hers and the game is over for the day.

x

x

She doesn't participate in the scarefest anymore.

Her parents stopped too once Vivien found her baby sobbing in a crib by Nora's side. Instead of tearing each other open or shooting each other in the head, they delegated the roles to other ghosts and settled by the fireside to care for their son. They were happy and withdrawn from everything, barely looking up to acknowledge the screams.

At first, Violet had played the welcoming committee. Whoever she could get to, she warned. You're going to regret it, she had whispered in honor of her friend, and you're going to die in here. But after the sixth time watching someone nearly her age run for his life, she figured the others had it covered and she went back to lounging on the wall in the front yard until the cars had safely peeled out of the driveway.

She sighs, watching people flee.

From the inside, Murder House can get a little boring.

She's ashamed to admit that the idea of something new or dramatic or horrible happening is actually exciting to her. With every passing week, the boredom threatens to consume her, which might technically be better than the darkness but it's just such an awful thing to consider that she can't help the feeling of exhilaration when she sees the sold signs on the front lawn.

After three years of for sale, she takes to fantasizing.

"What do you think would happen if they knocked it down?" she asks Vivien one night, her feet pulled up onto the couch. "I mean, if they knock down the house, are we still stuck on the property? Would we have to live in shitty condos or something?" She looks up from her lap when she doesn't get an answer. "Mom."

Vivien stops halfway through her lullaby to the baby in her arms and looks over at her firstborn. It's the same song she's been humming for the last sixty months, and Violet has begun to hate it. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. What were you asking?"

"What do you think happens if they knock down the house?"

Vivien smiles. "Hopefully, we'll never have to find out."

"Right." She rolls her eyes at the substandard parent default answer and flops back onto the couch.

x

x

Sitting at the dining room table with her chin in her hand, Violet laments everything her mother has become.

When she first met Maria and Gladys, really met them, not just freaked out because they were in her room and told them to beat it, Violet had thought maybe they were lucky to escape the searing rage in favor of being low-functioning zombies. The ghosts aware enough to have anger doom themselves to eternities of overwhelming pain, and at least the two nurses seemed to have escaped that.

But now she sees her mother, sitting in the same chair day after day, rocking her baby and singing the same lullaby, and Violet realizes that the darkness is beginning to claim her. It's getting harder and harder for Vivien to concentrate on anything other than the infant that never leaves her arms, and Violet knows that it won't be long before she reaches the point of no return.

The house collected the Harmon family, but it is not kind enough to refrain from breaking the set.

It's only a matter of time before Vivien is completely lost to her maternal desires, and she knows her father will lose himself once she is. Death's saving grace was to grant him his family, and Violet knows he'll either descend into madness when it's taken away or give in to the darkness himself and follow his wife into oblivion.

She contemplates briefly the idea of being alone once again, and the summons slips from her lips before she has a chance to reconsider.

"Tate."

He stands still as a statue at the opposite end of the table, his arms hanging awkwardly by his sides. For a minute, they simply stare at each other. He looks hopeful, but in a decidedly hopeless way, and she works hard to keep any emotion off her face.

"You have a deck?" she finally asks.

He nods and reaches into his back pocket. It's the same ancient, flimsy box that she remembers dumping on her bedroom floor on many afternoons.

She taps the table. "Deal."

He crosses the room excruciatingly slowly to take a seat across from her. His sneakers squeak on the hardwood floor, and she watches too carefully as his fingers wrap around the chair. The ring on his thumb glints in the sunlight, and she looks down. He barely blinks as he stares at her, flicking cards into her hands as she tries to focus most of her attention on the lines in her palms.

Three hours of near-silence later, she tosses her cards onto the tabletop. Tate observes her movements with troubling attentiveness.

"Cigarettes," she says, rising from her seat. "If you want to play again tomorrow, bring me some cigarettes."

x

x

She lounges on the living room couch across from her parents, watching them coo at the baby while she fingers the worn binding of a book nearly a quarter of a century past its due date. It's been hidden under a floorboard for a long time, and for as many hours as she's been holding it on her lap she hasn't yet brought herself to open it.

It feels wrong, like she's betraying them, and it leaves a sour taste in her mouth. After all that her family has suffered, she wonders if it's fair for her to do this to them, however unconscious of her actions they may be. She wonders if the guilt will eat her from the inside out, if she'll ever actually feel anything but embarrassed to have let him back in.

Vivien starts humming and Violet feels her jaw twitch.

She plays it off as the result of shifting knees, but the book falls open in her lap completely intentionally and a flattened rose tumbles from between the pages. Rubbing the black petals between her fingers, Violet sighs and looks over at her parents again.

"I'm sorry," she says. Ben smiles and bends to kiss Vivien's forehead, and Violet is glad they can't hear her.

x

x

She sits down at the dining room table at the same time the next day, and he appears in his seat almost instantly. He begins to deal the cards, but Violet doesn't pick hers up.

"Oh." He reaches into his pocket and draws out a pack of cigarettes. He slides them across the tabletop and she eyes them happily. She pulls one from the box and puts it between her lips.

"Light?"

She isn't sure where the flame comes from, but suddenly he's leaning forward and holding a lit match very close to her face. She lets out a solitary puff, and he squeezes the fire between his fingers before dropping the smoldering stick.

"Deal," she says, and he finishes passing out the cards.

x

x

Her acquaintanceship with Chad isn't something she understands. He's smug and sarcastic and bossy and bitchy and she usually spends most of the time she's near him biting her tongue and trying not to tell him to go fuck himself, but the feelings seem to be mutual so she pulls the pack from deep inside a pocket of her sweater and holds it open for him.

"Where'd you get these from?" he asks, holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he reaches for her lighter. Inhaling deeply as the end catches, he falls back against the cushions of the couch and smirks.

She doesn't answer. She figures he'll place the value of a good smoke before her betrayal of their friendship. She figures correctly.

"What's your story?" she asks, depositing the pack into her pocket without taking one for herself. She pulls her legs up onto the coffee table and tucks them beneath her body. Chad takes the cigarette between his fingers and stares at her.

"I had my neck snapped in a barrel of apples and then I was shot in the heart by a psycho dressed up in the rubber fetish suit I bought to turn on my leather-loving, unfaithful partner." He quirks an eyebrow, bored. "What's yours?"

"Overdosed on pills after I found out my boyfriend shot up our high school and died seventeen years before I met him," she says dully. "But that isn't what I meant. I mean, what's the story that keeps you going?"

Chad stares blankly at her and takes another puff.

"I don't really have one, but I keep trying to come up with a good one. I'd be legal by now, so I could drink whenever I wanted and not have to worry about stealing my parents' booze, but I'd probably be in some shitty college, but I'd also probably be screwing some really hot burnout kid. Stuff like that, you know? So what's yours?"

He tilts his head slightly and snubs his cigarette out on the coffee table beside her knee. "I don't have one. You shouldn't either." She frowns. Sometimes she thinks that holding on to crap stories like that and sounding like those annoying girls she hates are the only ones that keep her from leaving behind the girl who lived here and becoming someone new, someone darker, someone that she can't see herself liking. "Stories like that won't do you any good here. Believe me."

"I'll go insane in here if I don't have something."

Chad smirks again. "Don't pull that with me," he says. "I told you the truth about him. Now it's your turn."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's your something," he drawls, "whether you like it or not. The sooner you own up to it the better."

Maybe she already has.

x

x

She tries and fails to blow a smoke ring, and he watches with faint hints of a smile on his face. He won their card game nearly an hour ago but stuck around to watch her burn through his latest gift, and she didn't send him away. She tries once more and then drops the butt onto the floor and crushes it beneath the toe of her boot. She can practically hear Moira and Chad hissing in pain, but Tate seems slightly amused and somewhere inside her it quells an ache.

"So," she says, looking more at him than through him for the first time in days, "I hear you're looking for a therapist."

He raises an eyebrow. She holds out her hand and he places the card deck into her up-turned palm, careful not to touch her. She re-deals the cards and holds hers between two fingers.

"Well, I'm volunteering my services. You talk. I'll listen."

He swallows uncomfortably.

"Seriously. I'm bored out of my skull in this place. And it's not like you're even looking for a qualified therapist. It's all bullshit, and I've read enough articles to be able to fake it even if it wasn't. You just need someone to confess your sins to, and I'm willing to listen."

"I don't—"

"Anyway," she interrupts, "I think it's about time I heard the truth about you from your own mouth."

She flips over the ace of diamonds, and for a moment he looks down at the cards like he has no idea what game they're playing. Then he licks his lips, looks up at her, and says, "In 1994, I set someone on fire."

She sits back in her chair and crosses her arms, leaning her elbows on the table. "Who?"

"My mother's boyfriend." He puts his cards down and touches his fingertips together. "The guy who came around on Halloween asking your dad for money. He killed Hayden," he adds. Her nose wrinkles in disgust, and then she rolls her eyes. She doesn't get along well with the idea of her father's mistress, but of all the things to get squeamish over it isn't the time.

"Why?"

"I think she was pregnant."

"No," she says, blinking pointedly. "Why did you set him on fire?"

Tate closes his mouth and looks away, and Violet spots moisture in the corner of his eyes. When he turns back, his face is hard and his eyes are watery. "He killed my brother. He let my mother keep Beau chained up in the attic, and when child services tried to take him to a better place he let her talk him into killing him. And then they both pretended it didn't happen, like Beau had died in his sleep."

She nods slowly. "So you set him on fire?"

"Poetic justice," he says, but his eyes harden slightly at the implication that his actions were unwarranted, and she doubts that these sessions are going to accomplish anything other than to make her hate herself more.

"In what way?"

"He murdered my brother."

"Right." She nods again. "But what makes it poetic?"

A corner of his mouth twitches. "His wife burned herself and his two daughters alive when she found out he was leaving her for my mother. They're still here, but they don't come out much. They stay in the basement."

"I've seen them," she says, thinking of the smoldering hair and dresses and the way they smile at everyone and offer plastic biscuits and empty cups on saucers. "Tea parties." He watches closely for her reaction, and she wonders if a real shrink would ever say what she's about to. "You're right. It's kind of poetic."

x

x

"Sometimes, those who love us are not what is best for us."

It should trouble Violet that the first person to come to mind is Hayden even though she knows who Moira is talking about, but it makes her laugh. She kicks her feet as she sits on top of the kitchen counter and watches the older woman struggle to reach glasses on the top shelf of a cabinet.

"I've spent the last five years trying to stop loving him," she says, rolling a stolen cigarette between her fingers. "I've watched my parents get so swept up in their own happiness that it actually makes me sick to look at them now. They don't even see this place for what it really is anymore. Everything is just perfect. Perfect marriage, perfect baby, perfect bullshit oblivion."

Moira shakes her head thoughtfully, tucking a rag into her apron pocket. "That's how they've chosen to cope. They've found happiness in a place of great sorrow. It's a rare feat. Don't you want that for yourself?"

It should trouble Violet that her answer is "No," but it just makes her laugh.

"I'd rather feel anything in the world than be stuck in some delusion for the rest of eternity." The elderly woman gives her a knowing look, and Violet squares her shoulders. "So, yeah, I'd rather torture myself by loving a monster and knowing that I can still feel than be lost completely for the rest of my life."

Moira tuts quietly, but Violet can't blame her for being skeptical.

"I won't take the easy way out," she swears. "Not again."

x

x

He has tear stains on his cheeks as he talks about Moira giving him the gun to shoot Chad, and Violet can't help but snort.

"What?" he asks, and he wipes his eye.

"Nothing," she laughs, shaking her head. When he doesn't continue his story, Violet assumes they're done for the day, stamps out her cigarette, and sits back in her chair. She stares at him like he's taught her, and he stares back. "We should discuss payment."

"Payment?"

She shrugs. "Therapy isn't cheap. Bullshit it may be, but it's certainly not cheap."

"You want more cigarettes," he sighs.

"No," she says softly. "I already told you what I wanted."

She leans forward and he stares at her with those eyes that seem like they pierce her very soul, and then she waits until his gaze darts down to her mouth. She beckons him forward with a single finger, and pressing her lips against his feels a lot like oblivion.

x

x

It becomes a regular thing to end their card game with open-mouthed kisses across the table. She leans up on her elbows and he meets her halfway, and they kiss until Violet doesn't remember what her own mouth is supposed to taste like, and then she vanishes and entertains herself in a room that was once his and once hers and once theirs.

Day after day, she smokes cigarettes and plays cards and sweeps her tongue over his, until the afternoon she finds herself actually crawling up onto the tabletop and sliding down into his lap. Her arms go around his neck and his hands ease up her sides and she kind of takes to wiggling her hips as she presses herself against his thighs. And then that becomes the regular thing. She sits on his lap and kisses him and trails her lips down his neck, and he slips his hands up the back of her shirt and pulls her closer to his chest as she mewls quietly and rolls her hips.

One day, as his hand eases up under her sweater, he manages to accidentally flick the back of her bra open, which she considers impressive for any teenage boy.

He freezes. "Shit, Violet, I—"

"It's about time," she murmurs, twirling a strand of his hair around her index finger.

"What?"

She smiles slightly, and then she shushes him.

x

x

He surprises her with a new lighter, and she can't figure out how he got it, but she tucks it into her pocket without question and stops him from shuffling the deck of cards a third time.

"Tell me about me."

He flips the cards over and begins to sort them, first by color, then by suit. "The first time I talked to you, I was being an asshole. I saw you with the razor and I couldn't help it. You were kind of hot and you looked... I don't know. I just wanted to know why you were cutting."

"And once you found out?"

He shrugs. "You were the first girl I'd ever met that I liked. It was the way you smiled at me that day in your room. It made me want to protect you."

"Is that why you killed those people who attacked us?"

"For the record, I only killed one of them." He smiles to himself. "That was the day I realized you were my soul mate."

"What?" She raises and eyebrow, but he doesn't take it back.

"You fought and you were brave," he says. "It was fucking magical. You laughed at them. That crazy bitch was about to drown you in a tub and you laughed at her. Tell me that doesn't sound like one of my wet dreams. You were perfect. I wanted you."

She closes her eyes and bites back a laugh.

"I mean, come on, Violet. You were totally badass."

She feels her neck flushing. She wonders if he'll love the new Violet that crumbles at the sound of his voice as much as he loves the Violet who sneered at homicidal maniacs while she was ankle deep in bathtub water.

He slides a hand across the table and loops his fingers around her wrist, pulling it towards him until her sweater slides up and exposes her forearm. His thumb glides over the silvery scars and he smiles again, dimples and all.

x

x

They make love for the second time ever on the stairs.

She's kneeling on the dining room table with her arms around his neck when she realizes that spending another half-hour fighting the tug from between her legs isn't what she wants. Tate has his hands on her waist and his tongue in her mouth, and Violet grabs the collar of his sweater in her fists and pulls.

They stumble out into the hallway where she catches the toe of her boot on the lip of the bottom step, so she attempts to crawl the rest of the way up while holding their mouths together, but they only get another three steps before giving up and laying right there.

Her fingers tug at the button of his jeans while he scrapes his teeth against the base of her neck and pulls her leggings down past her knees. Before either of them realizes it, underwear is pushed out of the way and he's thrusting inside her and she's arching her back off the hard wood.

She wraps a hand around the back of his neck and cries out in short bursts, and Tate pants into her ear. It's so different from the first time, when he did everything so carefully and she could only concentrate on the fact that it was him and he was inside her and he was looking at her naked and she was supposed to be better than blushing like that but his hands were everywhere and his mouth was hot and her whole body was on fire and he was looking at her like she was his whole world. And now they're both basically fully dressed on the main staircase where the angles just aren't conducive to this sort of thing and he's in and out and in and out like he's desperate to finish everything before it all disappears and she feels like she's ready to explode and his cheek is pressed against hers and she hears it.

"I love you, Violet."

Her orgasm is loud and shaking to his quiet one, and she clutches him as tightly as he grabs on to her. Her fingertips dig into his back as she tries to drag him closer, and he presses his forehead to her temple.

"Please don't go," he begs, pleads, his lips against her ear. "Please."

Suddenly, the twins run by, swinging something furry and bloody over their heads, but they don't bother to stop and gawk before disappearing into the basement.

Violet leans her head back against the stairs and looks into his eyes. He's still inside her and her leggings are still around her ankles and he's still panting and she's still shaking and he's still an unforgivable monster and she still loves him.

So she says, "Let's go upstairs."

x

x

"I don't want to hear about it," she warns. "I just want to know why."

He looks massively uncomfortable, and she's glad. She thinks she probably already knows half of the story and she could probably fill in the rest without having this discussion, but part of her needs to hear him say it, to hear it and make sure he knows that this will forever be a sin that she can't absolve.

His voice is quiet but certain when he begins to speak, and he keeps his eyes trained on his hands. "We all get stuck on something. Nora took care of me when my mother didn't, and all she ever wanted was a baby. I promised her I'd get her one, and I couldn't figure out how."

It's there, floating between them, heavy and toxic, and Violet realizes suddenly that she should care more, but her curiosity has always outweighed her morality and she simply leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.

"Stuck on something?"

He nods.

"Like what?"

"It usually has something to do with how you died," he tries to explain.

"Everyone?"

He nods again, and she begins to list members of the house. Charles is fixated on his own brilliance, Beau on wanting a playmate, Elizabeth on her quest for fame, and Lorraine on the betrayal of her husband. Maria is overwhelmed by her unwarranted punishment, Moira by her belief that all men deserve to rot in hell alongside his mother, and Bryan has a compulsive need to destroy everything he can get his hands on.

She licks her teeth. "What about Chad?"

"He's stuck on loving Patrick," he says, finally lifting his eyes to meet hers. She holds his gaze. "And Patrick's stuck on just wanting out of this house."

She asks the question he should have been expecting, but he still looks like he doesn't know how to answer. "Nothing." He settles on a lie, but one that he knows she'll quickly see though.

"Bullshit. What are you stuck on?"

He smiles sadly. "It took me a long time to figure out. I used to think it was all the stuff with my mom, but I guess I'm not that lucky." He takes a deep breath and cracks his knuckles. "There's only one other ghost in this house who's stuck in the same way that I am."

Violet only needs one guess. "Hayden."

"She's stuck on hunger," he tells her, "for anything and everything. It doesn't really matter what it is. Blood, sex, love. If she wants it, and she always wants it, she'll take it. That kind of need... Coupled with her anger management issues, the house has created quite the monster in her. But she's still nothing compared to me."

Violet wonders why she doesn't mind that he sounds almost smug, like he's proud of this title, or at least like he's accepted it.

"Bloodlust," he finally says, licking his lips and leaning forward as his voice lowers, and she thinks of the basement and the way his hair stuck to his forehead as he bent to kiss her while her heart raced with fear and excitement at the same time. It's a similar kind of racing to her pulse as he finishes explaining. "I got stuck with a permanent thirst for the carnage that violence leaves behind. I crave it. I need it."

"That doesn't excuse you for anything."

"No," he says, sitting back and fading into himself once again. "It doesn't. For a while I thought it did. I thought I couldn't help it. But I've been getting better."

She nods and the conversations lapses into silence.

He clears his throat.

"So... Have you figured out what you're stuck on?" he asks timidly, and she watches silently as he lays his cards on the table and wins a game she barely remembered they were still playing.

"You."

x

x

She skips five of their next card games, lying on her bed to stare at the ceiling, and then he appears nose-to-nose with her in the hallway on her way to do it a sixth time. She jerks back reflexively and rests a hand against the base of her throat.

"You didn't come today."

Even though his voice is a whisper, she checks around the hallway to make sure it's empty. "Look, Tate, we can't keep..." He nods, ducking his head slightly.

"Do you want to play chess? Or Scrabble?"

His face is so close to hers that she barely hesitates to say yes, forgetting that she hates playing Scrabble with him because he always leaves her at a distinct loss for words. She finds she doesn't need them though, because after the quickest game of chess she's ever lost he gently pushes the board to the side and ignores the other boxes. She refuses to smile on principle alone when he leans to kiss her, but she's more than happy to cuddle up to him on top of her comforter.

Later, with swollen lips and rumpled clothes, she pulls his arm forward to wrap around her waist and she lets him tuck himself against her.

"It's okay, you know," he whispers in her ear, trailing his fingertips up her arm and slipping them beneath the strap of her tank top. She leans back and bends her head so his mouth fits more easily to the curve of her neck.

"What?"

The tip of his tongue swipes lightly over the red mark he just left. "I know you're ashamed of me. To be seen with me. It's okay. We don't have to play cards anymore if you don't want to."

She closes her eyes and sighs.

"I want to," she says. "I just don't want the wrong people to find out."

"This house is full of the wrong people."

x

x

Their almost fourth time ever takes place in their old bedroom. This time they're both naked and the bed is soft and doesn't hurt her back, but they get caught. Tate has his fingers buried inside her and she has her breasts pressed against his chest as she sucks on his shoulder, and that's exactly when she hears a voice and is thankful they crawled under three layers of blankets.

"I see you two are fucking again."

Tate stills completely and curses under his breath. Violet curses loudly.

"Fuck off, Hayden."

The woman cackles. "This is priceless. I can't believe you actually forgave this little psycho."

Tate rolls to send her a searing glare, and Violet sits up. She looks carefully at the perpetually dirty woman in her bedroom, and she remembers what Tate told her. Her tolerance for Hayden has always been low, but she imagines being certifiable and taking a shovel to the face and finding herself trapped, and all of a sudden fighting with Hayden just seems pathetic. "I'm sorry that you were murdered here," she says, and the redhead takes a step back. "I'm sorry you're stuck here, and I'm sorry your baby died, and I'm sorry my dad made you think he loved you."

Hayden looks like she wants to cry, and she vanishes with a "Fuck you."

After that, the room is uncomfortably silent. He sits awkwardly against her headboard, twisting the ring on his thumb as she pulls the blankets around her chest. She lies down next to him and stares at the ceiling.

"I need a cigarette."

He looks down at her.

"All of this wasn't me forgiving you," she says, Hayden's words echoing in her ears. "I already told you. I can't. I won't."

"I know," he whispers.

For a second she hesitates, and then she turns to face him. "I miss you, though, and I'm tired of being lonely. I've always been alone. People think I'm weird, and I am, but I don't want to be alone. And I really don't want to be Chad and Patrick. Hating you..." She sighs and shakes her head, "Is exhausting. It doesn't come naturally to me at all. I have to constantly remind myself of why I have to hate you, why I can't just let myself be with you again, and reliving all of it is exhausting."

Tate slides to lie beside her, and their cheeks just about touch.

"You know what the worst part is?" she asks. "I never would have had to be alone. You fucked it all up. From the day I took all those pills until the day my mother died I actually thought about it. I thought about you and me and what it would be like to live here forever. With you. I imagined all these stupid little fantasies. We'd listen to music and we'd smoke and we'd screw whenever we wanted to, and maybe we'd even scare people out of the house, and on Halloween we'd go out on corny little dates and then we'd just fuck stuff up around town. Sounds perfect right?"

He nods, a wistful expression floating across his features.

"And I knew. Or I thought I knew. I knew you were a monster, and I still wanted you." She sighs. "You killed people. And you were dead. And all I wanted was to be here with you."

Tate looks away.

"And now I know everything. Right?" He nods, ashamed. "Then maybe I'm a monster too. Because I still want you."

x

x

Violet learns quickly that there aren't many places to find privacy in the house. While some ghosts, like her parents, seem to have claimed rooms for themselves, the rest float aimlessly through the halls as they please, and she's tired of it.

Holding the front of Tate's sweater, she drags him from room to room and peers around the doorways until she finds an empty one. The door locked behind them, though it doesn't do much good if anyone actually wants to come inside, they make themselves comfortable.

He's barely sitting on the edge of the mattress when she pushes him back and straddles his hips, her hands on his shoulders and in his hair as she kisses him. He wraps an arm around her and shifts them backwards, and she bends forward happily as he begins to lie back.

The floorboards in the hallway creak suddenly and Violet's ears perk. She rolls off of Tate and, in an oddly life-like moment of panic, pulls him into the closet to hide. He stumbles in behind her and shoves the hanging shirts out of his face.

She holds a finger to his lips, pressing their foreheads together, and they both stand very still. Footsteps pad across the room, and Tate daringly slips his hand around her waist and tugs her forward. Violet shakes her head, but he only wraps his lips around the tip of her finger and grins when she hiccups softly. The footsteps stop suddenly and Violet holds her breath, but the closet door swings open anyway and Chad glares down at them. He reaches in and grabs them both by the upper arm.

"I would prefer it if you refrained from getting your grimy, sweaty, teenaged nastiness all over the only decent clothes I have been able to salvage over the years."

Tate wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and Chad rolls his eyes. Violet holds her breath again and waits for things to start crumbling.

"Well, isn't this wonderful. Just what I needed. Further confirmation that I'm the only one in the house not currently getting any."

x

x

Three weeks later, Violet is kneeling outside in the dirt with Moira when she feels a jet of icy water shoot across her back. It soaks easily into her sweater and drips down, sending shivers up her spine. She yelps, dropping her gardening shovel, and whirls around.

Tate stands with his arms crossed and a smug smile on his face, the still-running hose flailing at his feet as he tries to kick it away. "Don't look at me," he says. "It was Troy."

"You're an asshole." She peels off her sweater and drops it into the dirt. "And you're about to get very wet." She lunges for the hose but settles for a handful of mud when he jerks it out of her reach with his foot, and she manages to land a shot to his face before he has a chance to dodge it. He stumbles for a second as he wipes the mud from his eyes and she takes the opportunity to grab the hose off the ground.

Clamping her thumb across most of the opening, she grins as the water pressure builds up and blasts against his chest, and she proceeds to chase him around the backyard and down along the side of the house until his foot catches on a tree root and hers catches on a hole. They tumble to the ground and Tate grunts as her weight comes down on his stomach, but she only smirks and aims the hose for his eyes.

"So," he finally says, water dripping off his chin as she holds the hose over his head, and it strikes her as yet another one of those unshakeable moments when they seem eerily alive. His arm snakes around her waist and he pulls her up until their hips are matched and she can feel her breasts pressing firmly against his chest. "Just how wet did I get you?"

She rolls her eyes and drops the hose, and his head falls back onto the muddy grass. Stroking his soggy hair, Violet tightens her fingers into a fist and pulls him up until their noses touch.

"I'm soaked," she whispers against his mouth.

"So is the lawn," Moira calls, and Violet hears the clink of a trowel falling into the storage bucket. "Just because you two can't be killed doesn't mean the grass can't. And don't you dare track all that mud back into the house. I don't clean up after ghosts."

Violet bites her lip to hide a smile, but Tate laughs out loud.

Footsteps squish from around the back of the house, and Moira looks somewhat shocked when Violet spares her a glance. There is a brief moment of shame for disappointing the only real member of her faux-family left, but then, as the maid tilts her head, Violet realizes she's not looking at how they're tangled together on the ground or how there are dirty handprints on her clothes from where he grabbed at her.

She's watching Tate laugh.

Violet turns back to him just as he rolls over and slams her back against the ground, mud splattering across his face as he continues to laugh. "Yeah, Vi, don't bring that mud into the house."

Moira stays to watch only until Violet slaps a handful of mud and grass against the back of his head and says, "I wouldn't dream of it," and she returns to her gardening as the teenagers begin to kiss, Violet's arms winding tightly around Tate's neck.

x

x

"Mom? Dad?"

Neither of her parents looks up at her, so she takes a deep breath and sits down on the edge of the coffee table. Her mother coos at the baby and her father rubs her mother's feet and Violet smiles at her hands.

"I just want to tell you that I'm happy. That he makes me happy."

They continue on as if she never spoke, and she takes a deep breath.

"I know you'd probably be upset with me if you understood what I was saying, and I get it. He's a rapist and he's a murderer, and there's no way to really move past any of that. But I'm not forgiving him for the stuff he's done. I'm not making excuses for him either. I'm just letting myself be happy with him."

Vivien starts to hum and Violet licks her lips. She hugs herself and takes another breath through her nose.

"It's all a part of the darkness, I guess," she says. "We all get our own punishments. Part of him is always going to be a monster and I'm always going to love him, and maybe if I were a better person I'd stay away from him. I'd make him suffer for everything he's done." She watches her father cradle her mother's legs against his stomach. "It makes a much better story that way. It makes me sound like a hero. I sent him away. I did the right thing. I was strong and I was brave."

Ben reaches over and wipes a spot of drool from his son's face. Violet wipes away her own tear.

"But I'm not. I'm weak. I'm terrified... and you're leaving me alone. You picked a path that I don't want to go down. And I'm going to be stuck here forever."

Her parents smile to themselves and Violet tugs on her hair at the roots.

"And, yeah, that was just one giant list of excuses, so, no bullshit. I love him," she says again, and then she smiles sadly. "And he's all I have."

x

x

She gives Chad two full packs of cigarettes the next time she finds him alone.

"These from Norman Bates Junior?" he asks, but he opens the top and holds out an expectant hand for her lighter.

"Technically, no. They've been regifted, so they're from me."

He takes a single puff.

"Are...?" It feels strange to want his approval because she knows that if he calls her a shithead and says that there's something seriously wrong with her she'll just flip him off and leave, but at the same time she just wants to hear him say it. "Are you okay with this?"

"Free cigarettes? Yes." He crosses his legs. "You fucking your boyfriend in my closet? No."

Violet shrugs. "Sorry."

"That's what beds are for," he drawls. "And couches. And kitchen tables. Showers. Floors. Mm." He takes another drag from the cigarette and then flicks it at her face. "Stay the fuck out of my closet."

She picks the dying butt up off the ground and brings it to her lips before throwing it back at him. "We weren't doing it in there. We were hiding."

"Either way. Stay the fuck out of my closet."

She licks her lips. "I'm sorry." And he's smarter than a lot of the others in the house give him credit for, so he knows what she's really apologizing for this time.

"Look. All I wanted from this house was to be happy in it. I wanted Pat to love me, and I wanted to have a family. And now I know that he wanted to leave me and that he hasn't loved me in a long time. I told you before. Your man loves you. You take what you can get. I can understand that."

She nods and Chad finally stamps out his cigarette.

"I can't say I don't lament the fact that you're getting down and dirty with the fucker who murdered me, but I'll learn to live with it." He pats the cigarettes in his pocket. "I'd hate to miss out on the gifts."

Violet smiles. "I've never... I've never really had a friend before."

"Oh, yeah, you and I are close." Then he shrugs. "But I'll take what I can get."

x

x

She knows Chad didn't mean to offer suggestions, but she takes them anyway and she and Tate claim each other on the table and the couch and don't particularly give a fuck who's watching them. She gets an interesting rush when the new owners walk into room where Tate has her up against the wall, but they're mostly dressed and the couple can't see them anyway.

It's only upon pulling him into the bathroom to make good use of the few days when the house will have hot water that she realizes they may very well have come full circle. They weren't and then they were and then they weren't and now they are, and she just wants to touch him because once upon a time he was dead and she was dying and now he kind of makes her feel alive.

He pulls all three layers of camisole, shirt, and sweater over her head at once, and she only manages to push him back long enough to strip him of his own clothes. She's almost hesitant to step over the side of the tub, but he goes in first and it's easier for her to follow. The water blisters her skin but his mouth feels hotter against her ear when he kisses her, and Violet wraps her arms around him. She grips his shoulders and hugs their chests together, and he tells her that he loves how perfectly they fit.

She laughs a little until she starts to cry, and then she cries into his neck until she can't tell if it's tears or water running down her face.

"I love you, Tate," she whispers, and everything fades into the background. All she can hear is his heartbeat, all she can feel is the rise and fall of his chest, and all she can see is the smile on his face. She wonders if this is what it's like for him, if this is how it is to have somebody else at the center of your world, and her knees start getting weak.

"Come on," she says, her voice shaky. "Come on."

Under the covers in their old bedroom, she nestles her head against his chest.

"We're going to be okay."

She nods. "Yeah. I think so." He kisses her forehead, and she notices that the sunlight from the open window barely grazes the edge of the mattress. Untangling a foot from the sheets, she slides it off the bed and out of the shadows. She glances at him. "Sit up," she whispers, and he raises an eyebrow. "Come on. Sit up." He does as she asks, and she shoves him on to the floor. He lands with a thud on his back, groaning slightly as she hops down on top of him. "Good."

"What are you doing?"

Reclaiming, she thinks, watching the sunlight glint off his curls and easing her hands down his chest. "Fucking you on the floor," she says.

"All you had to do was ask," he teases.

She hums thoughtfully. "I'll keep that in mind."

x

x

_Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?_

_-_Rose Kennedy

x

x

**A/N**: I'm not exactly new to the fandom, but I am new to writing for it. And I'm super anxious about this piece. The sheer amount of awesome fic I've read is wildly intimidating, and on top of that these characters are hard for me to get a solid grasp on. No matter how many times I rewrite, it always feels like I'm simultaneously teaching myself something new about them and destroying anything I thought I knew before.

Basically what it boils down to is that I'm a sucker for a happy ending (or at least an angsty ending done properly-here's looking at you, RM) but I'm always really weirded out when I try to write any sort of happy!Tate. I don't know why, but it's like the very idea of Tate Langdon laughing or being happy for an extended period of time just does not compute. But these characters lend themselves fabulously to fragmented vignette-like storytelling, so I guess it's all good.


End file.
